Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is the analysis of facts to form a judgment. The subject is complex, and several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, unbiased analysis, or evaluation of factual evidence. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities as well as a commitment to overcome native egocentrism and sociocentrism.
The objective of critical thinking is to form a judgement. Now isn't that something? All I hear these days is, don't judge. In other words, just think as you are taught, don't think for yourself. Critical thinking inherently requires you to do that for yourself. Deciding who to agree with isn't critical thinking. Therein lies the issue. If I am paying thousands of dollars to be " educated " and corporations are paying people based on the " degree " of education they have, the critical thinker would have to just agree with what is being taught to succeed. That's an objective analysis of that situation. It isn't necessarily being educated. An individual that never attended a single day of formal education can still possess critical thinking skills. Those skills are required for survival, more so for the least educated among us is my thinking. Today we may define that as Street smarts. Critical thinking is centered around yourself and your survival. Today many critical thinkers are being accused of being conspiracy theorists. They are proposing a different judgement on social and economic situations. When these judgement are contrary to what the " official " line is, this is especially true. The " experts " are paraded out to testify to the official judgement. We are seeing this played out before us today. The basis for critical thinking is having all the facts and viewing them in an objective, unbiased, indeed detached, way. The way we receive those " facts " must be that way also and I don't think anyone believes that they are today. No, the media is feeding us what? Everything from the bare facts to outright lies and fabrication. We are then told to discern the difference between the two. Just don't utilize any critical thinking skills when doing so. No, that will get you labeled as biased, racist, and any number of things. You must fully support the agenda of the day or be ostracized. The only good thing being, that agenda changes almost on a daily basis given the circumstance. Yesterdays critical thinking is outdated, the conclusion wrong, the judgement too harsh. Just do as directed by competent authority. Just remember it is that authority that is declaring itself competent.
Yes we hear a great deal about critical thinking. What are we talking about? Common sense mostly. That is the first requirement for the critical thinker, common sense. You can't teach common sense but you can reprogram someone to lack that commodity. How do you do that? You accomplish that by allowing behaviors and actions contrary to common sense. You then begin to call those behaviors normal, natural , reactions thus dulling that feeling that the action is inherently wrong. We tend to call that " cultural differences. " Thing is, if you just watch small children you can easily see how they are not yet effected by any of that. They are not aware of cultural differences at all. Therefore they are not exercising any critical thinking. They make no judgement. Sometimes they get hurt by that and that's how they learn. They are also not aware of any social differences, everyone is the same to them, until they are taught differently. Well, they will learn that over time regardless. The funny thing about critical thinking is, the object is not to be critical. The objective is to arrive at an informed, sensible and rational decision. To make a fair judgement based on facts. The sole defense against that is to change the facts! Something that happens a great deal in todays world. And if you can't change the facts you can at least cause confusion and fear. Take this Covid 19 as an example of that. Fear is being used. According to the news this pandemic is killing people at an alarming rate. First off aren't we alarmed when anyone dies of anything? Yeah it's pretty upsetting. What is the mortality rate for this disease? Just about 3.4%. There is this other virus that permeates our society. It has an incidence rate of about 22.79% , almost one in four people. It is estimated 62 million people get this virus every year in the United States alone. What is it? The common cold. How is it spread? The exact same way this Covid 19 virus is spread. Yet we take zero protective measures. Why is that? Well, because it can't kill you right? Wrong the common cold can indeed kill you if you have underlying medical conditions. I did a brief search for a stat on that but found none. I expect that is because no one reports dying from the common cold, it is usually pneumonia. Even though the cold precipitated that disease that is what will be reported. It's rather like the flu. It is estimated that between 9.2 and 35 million people will get the flu every year. Between 140,000 and 700,000 will be hospitalized. About 36,000 people a year will die from the flu, although it will be reported as, complications from the flu. This despite vaccines and antibiotics.
Well, we will get through all of this. I do believe if more people exercised critical thinking skills ( common sense ) we wouldn't have all the friction and division in society that we are experiencing. But the blame has to placed somewhere doesn't it? That seems to be of primary importance in this pandemic at the moment. Who did what, when, and whose fault is it? It's rather like asking who left the barn door open instead of chasing after the cow. Let's get the cow back in the barn first shall we? How are we going to do that? Social isolation? Shutting down the country indefinitely? The news reports this as, " a new way of life. " What's that, staying at home? Wearing a mask in public? Social distancing? Or is it submitting to government testing and immunization? Carrying your " papers " with you at all times to show you are not a biological danger to society? A new way of life? Some in a position of authority are declaring nothing goes back to normal until everyone is immunized! Could take a year or more. Better learn to live on a budget. Well staying at home will save you a lot of money so there's that. A new life.
Yes we hear a great deal about critical thinking. What are we talking about? Common sense mostly. That is the first requirement for the critical thinker, common sense. You can't teach common sense but you can reprogram someone to lack that commodity. How do you do that? You accomplish that by allowing behaviors and actions contrary to common sense. You then begin to call those behaviors normal, natural , reactions thus dulling that feeling that the action is inherently wrong. We tend to call that " cultural differences. " Thing is, if you just watch small children you can easily see how they are not yet effected by any of that. They are not aware of cultural differences at all. Therefore they are not exercising any critical thinking. They make no judgement. Sometimes they get hurt by that and that's how they learn. They are also not aware of any social differences, everyone is the same to them, until they are taught differently. Well, they will learn that over time regardless. The funny thing about critical thinking is, the object is not to be critical. The objective is to arrive at an informed, sensible and rational decision. To make a fair judgement based on facts. The sole defense against that is to change the facts! Something that happens a great deal in todays world. And if you can't change the facts you can at least cause confusion and fear. Take this Covid 19 as an example of that. Fear is being used. According to the news this pandemic is killing people at an alarming rate. First off aren't we alarmed when anyone dies of anything? Yeah it's pretty upsetting. What is the mortality rate for this disease? Just about 3.4%. There is this other virus that permeates our society. It has an incidence rate of about 22.79% , almost one in four people. It is estimated 62 million people get this virus every year in the United States alone. What is it? The common cold. How is it spread? The exact same way this Covid 19 virus is spread. Yet we take zero protective measures. Why is that? Well, because it can't kill you right? Wrong the common cold can indeed kill you if you have underlying medical conditions. I did a brief search for a stat on that but found none. I expect that is because no one reports dying from the common cold, it is usually pneumonia. Even though the cold precipitated that disease that is what will be reported. It's rather like the flu. It is estimated that between 9.2 and 35 million people will get the flu every year. Between 140,000 and 700,000 will be hospitalized. About 36,000 people a year will die from the flu, although it will be reported as, complications from the flu. This despite vaccines and antibiotics.
Well, we will get through all of this. I do believe if more people exercised critical thinking skills ( common sense ) we wouldn't have all the friction and division in society that we are experiencing. But the blame has to placed somewhere doesn't it? That seems to be of primary importance in this pandemic at the moment. Who did what, when, and whose fault is it? It's rather like asking who left the barn door open instead of chasing after the cow. Let's get the cow back in the barn first shall we? How are we going to do that? Social isolation? Shutting down the country indefinitely? The news reports this as, " a new way of life. " What's that, staying at home? Wearing a mask in public? Social distancing? Or is it submitting to government testing and immunization? Carrying your " papers " with you at all times to show you are not a biological danger to society? A new way of life? Some in a position of authority are declaring nothing goes back to normal until everyone is immunized! Could take a year or more. Better learn to live on a budget. Well staying at home will save you a lot of money so there's that. A new life.
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